Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (21 May 1921-14 December 1989) was a Russian scientist and human rights activist.

Biography
Andrei Sakharov was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR on 21 May 1921, and he graduated in physics from the University of Moscow and went on to become a research physicist. From 1947 to 1953, he played an important part in the development of the Russian hydrogen bomb. The youngest member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1954, 1956, and 1962. He then worked on peaceful applications of nuclear energy. During the 1960s, he became increasingly concerned by the threat of nuclear war. Conscious like few others of the destructive power of nuclear energy, he came to advocate a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, which led to his early retirement. Supported by his second wife, Helena Bonner, he became the most prominent member of the dissident movement agitating for greater human rights. He co-founded the Committee for Human Rights in Moscow in 1970, when he also co-wrote an open letter to President Leonid Brezhnev calling for democratization of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. His criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was too much for the Soviet authorities, who exiled him to Gorki and put him under house arrest. An acute embarrassment for the more reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, he was released after a hunger strike in 1986. Although generally supportive of Gorbachev's reforms, he was not afraid to criticize them when they did not go far enough. He died from a heart attack. The Sakharov Prize for Defense of Human Rights was established by the European Community in 1987.